FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MOTORCYCLE CLUB - PAGE 5

Road food is hearty fare found on out-of-the-way highways. Restaurants serving it are normally immune to brittle trends and are often in demand wherever they are found. If you are looking for some of the best road food in the Midwest, you could do worse than to locate the whereabouts on a given weekend of one of Chicago's stranger motorcycle gangs. They are the Streeterville Scramblers, 75 members strong, and they are into gourmet dining. Gourmet dining? The Scramblers, founded in 1963, are lawyers, doctors and other well-heeled middle-agers who ride their Hondas, Harleys and BMWs to restaurants for dinner and to inns for overnight stays.

Sonny Barger blew through Chicago on Memorial Day. His name doesn't do anything for you? Then try the Hell's Angels, because Ralph "Sonny" Barger created what you know as the Hell's Angels in 1957 and remains the group's maximum leader at age 61. Sonny (he hates "Mr. Barger") was promoting his memoir: "Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club" (William Morrow), and kicking off an old-fashioned Angels run from Chicago to Phoenix on Route 66. Barger's the hombre who gave you motorcycle culture, so every time a gaggle of tattooed, Sunday morning commandoes roll by on duded-up Harley Sportsters, remember Barger, because their black muscle shirts, leather vests and chin whiskers didn't drop out of the sky from Oz. Nor did the cruiser class Honda Shadows and Kawasaki Vulcans you see puttering up St. Charles Road after church.

This San Francisco trio plays the role of the jaded introverts, the sullen leather-jacketed outcasts with the basement tans and sullen stares. It's not exactly a new pose; in fact, it's one of rock's more enduring images, as the Velvet Underground demonstrated in the '60s and the Jesus and Mary Chain in the mid-'80s. Now Los Angeles bad boys the Warlocks are doing it too, with a swirling dollop of acid-rock paranoia in the mix that backs up the pose. In comparison to those head-shearing bands, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club might as well be the Partridge Family.

Chicago is home to dozens of motorcycle clubs. Not outlaw motorcyclists, mind you, but regular folk who gather to shoot the breeze and then head out on six-hour Sunday rides through the country for charity. The groups have names such as, American Gold Wing Association, Villa Park HOG (Harley Owners Group) and City Heat Motorcycle Club. The poker run is an old favorite. What's a poker run? Analeah Archibald and husband, Ken, of Carol Stream were arranging the American Gold Wing Association of Illinois/Chapter H's annual Christmas in July Poker Run for July 22 and took a break to talk about logistics.

By Larry Lipman, New York Times News Service. Reporter Leah Carliner contributed to this story | October 16, 2005

They may ride hogs, but they're kosher. Wearing leathers and head scarves, their jackets and vests festooned with patches and pins, bikers from Miami Beach to Toronto to Detroit gather to commemorate the end of the Holocaust. Neil Cooper, 48, of Atlanta, who made the trip on his Honda Valkyrie Rune, said: "We have to bring attention to the Holocaust, to the memories, and this is a very different way to bring attention." "Ride to Remember" was the theme of this first international gathering of Jewish motorcyclists.

Prosecutors say they've located a new witness for the Robert Bostic murder trial who will reveal what until now has eluded authorities in the nearly 30-year-old case: a motive. Bostic, 71, was arrested in January in connection with a 1982 shooting in a Round Lake Beach motorcycle clubhouse that killed Carlton Richmond, 31. But with Bostic's trial set to start Monday, officials had never said what they believe prompted the slaying. But prosecutors on Friday said they will present a newfound witness who told them Bostic shot Richmond because Richmond couldn't pay up after losing a bet that Bostic couldn't finish a bottle of whiskey.

Lake County sheriff's investigators were looking into the weekend theft of an Antioch man's $10,000 motorcycle from a motorcycle club. Reports said the motorcycle was taken from outside Sojourner Motorcycle Club, 15725 21st St., between 2:30 and 7 a.m. Sunday.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club B.R.M.C. (Virgin) If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then the Jesus and Mary Chain must love the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The Jesus and Mary Chain, of course, nicely encapsulated two of the most prominent underground trends of the past 20 years -- the buoyant melodies of the Beach Boys and the drugged out, feedback-laden drones of the Velvet Underground -- and the Bay Area's Motorcycle Club boldly picks up right where the Chain left off. The pleasures of songs such as "Love Burns" and "Whatever Happened To My Rock 'n' Roll" hinge totally on the listener's tolerance for the band's flagrant borrowing, resulting in a sense of either deliriously familiar fun or distracting deja vu.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Take Them On, On Your Own Another U.S. group living vicariously through the Brit music scene, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club--which actually has one British-born member--doesn't move much beyond its already obvious Stones Roses and Jesus and Mary Chain leanings on "Take Them On, On Your Own." Right off, there's promise with the swaggering opener "Stop" and the Stooges-esque follow-up "Six Barrel Shotgun," but most of it's lost soon after with an indistinguishable assortment of been-there, done-that, feedback-glazed noise-pop.